The Iceman Cometh

I'm leaving work an hour early, I've got to trek the mile home across the frozen tundra, on foot.  It's -2°F outside, and the snow is really blowing. Windchill is around -30°F still, and I'm not wearing long underwear.  Hopefully, if I start to freeze to death, Han Solo will show up and slice open one of those smelly Tauntauns with a lightsaber.  Sure, they smell worse on the inside, but the steaming guts will keep me warm...

Alright, so I'm taking the whole Hoth metaphor a bit too far, but it really is cold outside, and I don't even have a Tauntaun to ride..

I just read the whole transcript of the Supreme Court session that took place this morning.  Yes, it's a slow day here at work.  Everyone has gone home because of the weather, but the University remains open officially, since it's finals week.  I'm feeling more optimistic for Gore after reading the transcript, the Supremes seem reluctant to question the Florida Supreme Court, since there doesn't appear to be a gross error on their part.  I've also come to the realization that I never want to stand in front of the Supreme Court while the nine of them hammer me with questions... Update: I had to laugh, I looked at Hal's weblog, and he said almost the same thing I did:

Gotta go. NPR is broadcasting the tape of the Supreme Court pleadings. Later: One thing I am sure of, I never want to stand in front of those nine Justices and get pelted, nay, hammered with questions.

I'm setting up our first 1 Gigahertz computer this morning.  It's a Dell machine, with 512MB of RAM. Needless to say, it's fast, very fast, at least until we get our first Pentium IV computer in a couple of weeks...

I walked my freezing ass all the way to work this morning.  It's only about a mile, but when the wind chill is -30°F, then 100 yards seems like a long way to walk.  I looked at my car, and decided it looked like it had been blocked in by the helpful snowplows. Adding in that we're expected to get between 4-10 inches of snow yet today, I decided that walking would probably be more efficient and safer.  I made it to work, with visions of The Empire Strikes Back in my head all the way.  When I made it to work, I had to defrost my facial hair, I unbundled then dashed the 40 feet from my building to the Union for a warm mug of hot chocolate...

It's -2 outside right now, you can tell the people who are either really stupid or really addicted to nicotine, they're the morons who are standing outside smoking a cigarette in this weather...

Titan A.E.

I woke up early this morning, and decided to watch the DVD of Titan A.E. that's been sitting on my entertainment center for the last few weeks.  It was really a fun movie for a Sunday morning, not necessarily superb, but entertaining and full of outstanding computer generated graphics. 

This is one of those DVD's that everyone should have in their collection, just to show off their DVD player. The visuals are outstanding on this disc, it made me wish I'd seen it in theatres, where it would have been even more breathtaking. The story is somewhat derivative, containing a lot of elements from Star Wars and Star Trek movies, but it's never boring, just not entirely original.

The one thing I was surprised at was the level of violence in the film, it was a little more than I was expecting, so this probably isn't a great movie for your five year old. In turn, this makes the movie have a little more appeal for an older audience, however. The voice acting is top-notch, Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, and Bill Pullman are just some of the actors who lent their voices to the characters. Watch the credits at the end, and you'll find a few more celebrities you know as well...

All in all, it was a fun movie to watch, and a great film to show off your equipment and the quality of DVD. It's not the greatest film of all time, but it's something that both a 10 year old and an adult could enjoy together. It reminded me a lot of Transformers: The Movie, now 14 years old, and made me wonder what it would have looked like given today's technology.

Walrus

As Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over till it's over."  It looks like the election debacle will continue for at least another week or so.  Gore won his case before a highly divided Florida Supreme Court.  I'm sure that George W. Bush is now having a bad day, and that his campaign is filing appeals as I write this before the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Gore camp has to be pleased, this could quite easily swing things in their favor, if the recounts produce the expected number of votes.

A co-worker showed me a pretty useful little program today.  It's called WeatherBug, and it sits in the system tray of your Windows-based computer, constantly updating and displaying current weather information.  Right now, mine is telling me that it's 16 (Fahrenheit) outside. Brrrr! The program also will beep if there's a weather advisory listed for your area.  You can double click on the temperature to bring up even more information such as wind chill, wind speed, humidity, radar maps, you name it! It's all free too, it's such a handy application, I'm considering putting it on faculty computers in the near future...

What I'm listening to today: This morning, I'm listening to the Star Trek: Insurrection Soundtrack.  While I don't like it as well as I like the Star Trek: First Contact CD, it's still a nice bit of moody instrumental music, great for just playing in the background while I'm working.  I think I've liked every single piece of music that Jerry Goldsmith has written for the Star Trek franchise, and this disc is no exception. Listen to a sample at the link above...

I see that Issola, the newest book in the Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com.  I just put my order in, I've read every book in the series, and thoroughly enjoyed them.  I had the opportunity to meet the author at a convention a couple of years ago, he made quite the impression, walking around with a parrot sitting on his shoulder.  He was a nice guy to talk to, and seemed genuinely thankful for the praise I gave him for his work.  I've sent him a couple of e-mails as well, just with minor questions about a book I just finished reading, or when an upcoming novel would be published, and he's always responded quickly.

If you're looking to try something by Brust, pick up Jhereg, it's the first in the Vlad Taltos series, and is full of witty swashbuckling adventure.

It was twenty years ago today that John Lennon was shot and killed.  I don't remember it, since I was 4 years old at the time, but you can't help but wonder "What if....." 

On a related note, the new Beatles album, 1, is selling like proverbial hotcakes.  I don't currently own any Beatles albums, I may have to pick this one up, it's got all of their good songs, and it's been remastered for better quality, apparently...

Infamy

The Onion is mocking the lack of racial diversity at my alma mater.  This article (it's a joke, laugh!) has some great lines in it, but ISU isn't exactly the Aryan Nation.  I posed for some University pamphlet photos when I was a sophomore.  They asked for a "diverse group of students" to participate.  Twelve African-Americans showed up, and two of us white folks.  So, Melinda, the white girl, and I were in nearly every shot they took, as otherwise it would have really looked strange.  If you looked closely at the shots, you could see that all of the students in the background were also black, since the cafeteria was closed at the time, and they only had the other students who'd shown up to plant in the background.  I just found one of the pictures on the Department of Residence web site, here it is:

This bit was funny:

      "Photoshop opens up an exciting new realm of possibilities for America's institutions of higher learning," University of Montana president Karl Watson said. "Here at Montana, for example, we plan to Photoshop up to 10 percent more Latinos into orientation brochures. If we can get funding, we may also Photoshop handicap-accessible ramps onto exterior shots of campus buildings."

I'm not sure that is really a picture fom ISU, that sort of looks like Friley Hall in the background, but I don't think it is.  On the brochure I was on, I spent the longest time trying to figure out where the shot on the front of the brochure was taken.  It clearly featured Friley Hall in the background, but it just didn't look right.  Then it dawned on me, they'd flipped the negative to have the people pictured be walking from left to right in the image.  Of course, that made it impossible to place the picture, as it didn't exist the way it was pictured.  If you looked closely, the words on the building in the backround were all mirror images..

I've found a number of useful services on the Internet in the last few years, but one of the best I've discovered is Paytrust.  Paytrust is an online bill-paying service, and it saves me at least an hour a month in my time, as well as the hassle of buying stamps.  I have most of my bills sent directly to them (very handy if you're a student or someone who moves often), they notify me by e-mail when they receive the bill.  They scan the bill in so I can view it online, and I can then authorize them to pay it.  They print out a check and mail it, and the funds come out of my checking account.  You can automate the service too, for instance, I've scheduled my student loan payment to be sent automatically on the first of the month.  You can automate as much or as little as you like.  At the end of the year, I'm going to pay the $14 to have Paytrust burn a CD with the images of all my bills on it and mail it to me.  I'll simply file it away, and I've got a record of all of my bills for the last year.

You don't have to have all of your bills sent to them, either.  You can manually enter all of the information for sending your bill in once, then just click on that company, and enter the amount to send to them.  It's extremely customizeable, you can really do whatever you want...

So what does it cost?  It's a reasonable $8.95 a month, that's actually less than it sounds like when you consider that you no longer have to pay for stamps.  If you're like me and send out about 10-15 different bills per month for various things, then you're already spending $3.30 - $4.95, so the service may not cost you as much as you think it does.  If you're interested, sign up through this link, and I'll earn a free month of service, and $25 will be donated to charity.

Mud Bars

Daily Radar has a list of the Ten Worst Date Cars today.  These are vehicles you don't want to take on a date, they aren't manly, and you're not half as cool as you think you are if you drive one of them.  I can say that, since my trusty Camaro isn't among the models listed...

Though it's probably not right to do so, we evaluate people by the cars they drive as well. Judged strictly on male driver terms, the following are the 10 biggest pussy cars of all time:

How frustrating! Our e-mail server is down here at work (I'm not the admin, so I can bitch about it).  My IMAP client (Outlook 2000) grabbed the header info before the server went down, so I can see the subject lines to about 5 different e-mails which are actually important, but I can't access them...

An Amish man has been jailed for refusing to display bright colors.  Apparently, he didn't want to put a big orange triangle on his buggy, to comply with the state law governing slow moving vehicles.  While I'm all for religious freedom, if you're going to use public roads, you've got to abide by the same laws as every other driver using them, especially those which are safety related, such as this is.  He's not only endangering himself, but also other drivers, making it a fundamentally different argument than helmet or seatbelt laws...

He was jailed Tuesday after a county judge found him in contempt for not paying $119 from an April 15 citation. In deference to his beliefs, Swartzentruber will be allowed to wear a blue shirt and pants instead of the usual bright-orange coveralls, deputy warden John Prebish told the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat.

I got up early this morning and whipped up some "Mud Bars" to bring in for our pot luck today.  I really have to micro-manage the oven in my apartment, rotating the food every few minutes, otherwise I wind up with something that's half burnt and half raw...